The second leg of the 2011 road trip has begun.  We are headed to Fayetteville, AR and will see lots of sights there. So far, we stopped off at Caddo Lake in Northeast, Texas.  What a great spot to hang out if it was not so HOT! The lake and Cypress trees are amazing.  A daddy long legs hitched a ride on my dad’s leg and those spiders are huge. We saw Cypress knees that were bigger than we are, but the mud was really deep getting there!  We are pretty sure that Squatchs live in these woods and the BFRO needs to investigate.  We looked for Squatchs in Flo-ridah, but just did not have time to look for them at Caddo Lake.  Click our ads to the right – make us millionaires!

Well, this is our first attempt at video production and we think it came out pretty good for two little kids.  We used Windows Movie Maker and it worked out okay.

We will be posting our videos as we get them cleaned up.  This is the first one and we hope you enjoy it.
Ben saw these hawks at Monument Rock in Kansas.  He used his Jedi animal powers to get close to them.

Well, the mighty 30 day road-trip challenge is over and we all survived.
We hit 16 states in roughly 30 days and had a great time doing it.
We camped and hiked all over the greater United States.
We are glad to be home, but our feet are already getting itchy.
Hiking the Appalachian Trail is starting to take shape as a future adventure.

On our way to Destin, we took a tip from Drive-ins, Diners, and Dives and hit the Metro Diner in Jacksonville, Florida.  It was goooooood and we are glad we took time to stop.

We also took the Man vs. Food advice and hit Deanie’s Seafood in Bucktown – just north of  New Orleans.  It was very good and well worth the stop.  We did our own little Man vs. Food using the lunch special – the mate platter.  Sam and Ben tried their hardest to eat it all in 45 minutes and just could not do it.  The mate platter had the option of shrimp, catfish, and/or oysters.  We all had a bit of all of it.  In the end, food won!

We are working on a few wrap-up posts for some of the spots where we spent the most time, like the Black Hills.  We will post overviews of the locations and what to do in each spot and such.  Videos and pictures are on the way as well.

Ice-ice-baby-A1A-beach_front_avenue
Flo-ridah is awesome, but it is a bit hot – much like Texas.
We made the trek from North Carolina down to Florida and it just kept getting hotter.
Harry Potter land is on the radar, but it apparently on the radar of everyone else as well.

Well,  what a cool city this was.  We spent five days here and have loads to say about this place.
We started out by caving at Diamond Caverns and ending up caving and camping at Mammoth Cave.

The Mammoth Cave campground is awesome, but DO NOT camp in the sites adjacent to the bath rooms.
We camped in site 12 and it was next to a bathroom and the light and noise was worse than expected.
The motion flood-lights are really bright and they ruin the camping experience.
We did not visit all 7 caves in the Bowling-Green area, but the two we checked out were the best we think.

We hit the Beech Bend amusement park in the middle along with quite a few other local stops.
The Kentucky Rumber is the bomb-diggitty and so was the tiltin-whirl!
Hand-breaded corn dogs and pretzels are hard to beat.

This city is really cool and has tons for us kids to do that does not cost an arm and a leg.

There are tons of local parks that are free and very kid friendly.

We had no idea that Indiana had 150+ foot tall sand dunes that you could hike and roll down, but boy do they.  We spent a few hours at the Lake Michigan beach just playing in the sand, throwing rocks, and learning to be good polar bears.  The water is freezing!
We scaled Mt. Baldy, the largest sand dune we have ever seen, and rolled down in fine fashion from the top – put all of this in a loop that repeats about 10 times and you have it.  The place was really cool with lots of rocks, sticks, and dirt – the things boys like best.

We made it to Chicago and it was pretty cool as usual.  We walked all over the zoo, biked along lake Michigan in the rain, and had some big old fat slices of pizza pie.  Chicago-style stuff pizza is really hard to beat.

We wrapped up our stop here by visiting the most amazing museum in the world – the museum of Science and Industry.  If you are ever in the Chicago area, you have to hit that museum.  It is lots of walking, but there are tons of things to do and see.  We were able to tour the U-505 – the German sub captured by the US in WWII.  This was really cool and we have been talking about it for days! We saw a real Enigma machine!